VOIP in the country

According to an article on Developing Telecoms from last month, VOIP service is becoming more prevalent in remote, rural areas. In some cases, people who have never had access to telecoms service before, may soon be eligible for VOIP.

Many in the VOIP industry have long hoped that VOIP would become a realistic option for people in remote or underprivileged areas, but that is a difficult vision to realise as it requires improving Internet access in rural environments. While it is not as difficult to provide Internet access in remote locations as it is to provide analogue telephone services, it is still a challenge that requires much planning and sophisticated engineering to be realised.

Nonetheless, this vision is coming to fruition. And as remote areas get better Internet and VOIP access, people living in remote, often depressed, regions will benefit from all of the advancement and opportunity associated with improved global connectivity.

According to the article in Developing Telecoms: "The uptake of VOIP, which has been deregulating across many African countries since mid-2000, is often linked to growing economies with the delivery of advanced voice services and more cost-effective access to rural and under-served areas."

Indeed, in better-served areas, improved connectivity services have often led to more productive businesses. When businesses have a telecoms service like VOIP at their disposal, they can enjoy improved connectivity with other companies in the local area and abroad for a very small monthly fee. This can make all the difference in a fledgling business's ability to grow, and the more companies can enjoy healthy growth, the better that region's local economy will be.

If, as the article makes it sound, improved remote connectivity with VOIP is a realisable goal, people in small communities could have access to the outside world like never before. People can keep in touch with family members who move away, and local merchants will have access to new opportunities. For example, even in a very remote area, if a merchant was connected to other merchants in the local area, the community may suddenly get new access to a greater diversity of materials, supplies, goods, and services, which will benefit the health and productivity of the local community.

If this technology switch is feasible, rural African communities will suddenly have access to a pretty sophisticated technology.

Local people will also have better access to important people and resources in other areas. For example, if there are no nearby medical doctors, local people in a small village could secure easy access to a doctor in another town, which would make it easier for doctors to instruct locals on how to tend to the sick or injured, and would make it easier to summon a doctor to the area more quickly if necessary.

And further, the Internet is a great resource for knowledge and learning. According to an article in Tech Transfer, 17 000 of SA's 26 500 primary and secondary schools do not have Internet access. Internet access and connectivity for these students could make all the difference in the education received. For example, students at these schools may have limited access to people who are knowledgeable on such subjects as programming, engineering, or medicine. With improved connectivity, they could access learning materials and teaching professionals from all over the world.

According to an article on the Ray On Storage Blog, ISPs have started to make use of unoccupied TV signals to deliver Internet to remote areas. Because the signals from these TV stations are very strong, they can be used to provide Internet services over wide geographic areas. Thus, these unused signals could be the perfect solution for what this article calls "the last mile", or the furthest, most remote occupied areas of rural Africa.

The best part of this potential solution to the issue is that it shouldn't require much, if any, new hardware or installation. Much of what ISPs need to distribute Internet services is already in place. This means people living in rural parts of Africa will not have to wait as long to get Internet access as they might have otherwise. And as soon as there is Internet access in place, business and residential VOIP providers can open their doors to a rural clientele.

As quoted in the article in Developing Telecoms, Serge Adam, VP of EMEA at Sonus, says: "Africa is a rapidly growing market, leap-frogging 'legacy' technologies to take advantage of the cost savings and enhanced services that can be enabled with VOIP and SIP."

And this brings up a good point: if this technology switch is feasible, rural African communities will suddenly have access to a pretty sophisticated technology, though many never had access to the legacy technology that preceded it. Will people in rural communities find this technology useful, or will they be inclined to use it?

Several years ago, studies were performed on the results of the South African movement to introduce electricity in more rural locations. Studies found there were increases in such notable areas as women entering the workforce and women attending school. However, Ravi Naidoo, for The New Age, notes there can really only be change in rural populations when there is: increased agricultural production in rural areas, improved "social and economic infrastructure such as roads and communal sanitation", and conducted land reform.

Improved IT could be considered to be among the first stages of rural improvement. Social and economic infrastructure undoubtedly include communication services, and while some may still consider Internet connection to be a luxury rather than a necessity, the installation of Internet service could also include VOIP connectivity, which would provide rural people with a primary method of telecoms service. This would be an excellent way to roll multiple important services into one utility, which would be cheaper for the state to provide, and easier to maintain.

While, according to Naidoo's hypothesis, there is still much work to be done to significantly improve the way of life for rural South Africans, the improved access to telecoms and broadband services in rural communities could represent a significant step towards this improved way of life.